Cognitive Psychology PDF

COGNITIVE PSYCH FINAL COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY = mapping the mind, brain and mind. -​ Mind: system that lets us pay attention to the world. -​ When we perceive something, remember or reason the brain activity relates to these actions. Brain representation for different scenarios...

COGNITIVE PSYCH FINAL COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY = mapping the mind, brain and mind. -​ Mind: system that lets us pay attention to the world. -​ When we perceive something, remember or reason the brain activity relates to these actions. Brain representation for different scenarios and it compares representations of the world. -​ Brain synthesizes reality for you. When we perceive something is not a real true reflection of what is happening. Stitching together reality for you, that’s why we think things are there when they are not and you can misremember information. HOW DOES MIND FUNCTION IN EVERYDAY SITUATIONS? 1.​ Attention: how we focus our mind on something. Only paying attention to certain stimuli and specific tasks. Attention to memory: attention to your thinking maybe inside the mind. 2.​ Perception 3.​ Learning and Memory: how we can retain information to help us in the future, can guide future behaviors and we need to retain it to be helpful. 4.​ Language: knowledge can be expressed through language, helping to manipulate information in our mind. 5.​ Problem Solving and Decision Making HIGHLIGHTING: A GOOD STUDY STRATEGY? -​ Fowler and Baker (1974): read scientific articles and highlight as much as you want, tested on this material and see how well you remember this information. One week later there was a test, multiple choice, can you remember the information? -​ Group A: some students do highlighting: no difference ALL QUESTIONS -​ Group B: they do not highlight anything: no difference ALL QUESTIONS -​ When only highlighted text was asked then there was a difference in the grades, the highlight group got a higher percentage than the group that didn’t highlight (0.76 to 0.66). -​ When only non highlighted text was asked the group that highlighted got a lower grade than the people who didn’t highlighted (0.62 to 0.69). WHAT ABOUT RE-READING TEXT? -​ Rothkopf (1968): High school students read 1500 word text, scientific articles, they had 5 different groups: re read 1, 2, 3, 4 or 0 times. Does it improve the retention of the information? Testing after 10 min of re-reading the material. -​ CLOZE procedure, a text that you have read and you remove words from it and fill out the information from what you have read. -​ People that re-read it 4 times did significantly better than people who did not re-read it but not that different from 2 to 4 times. -​ There is diminishing returns for how many times you re read the text, instead of reading it 4 or 5 times do something more effective. TESTING A GOOD STUDY STRATEGY? -​ Roediger and Karpicke (2006): Testing effect being studied when taking a memory test after something you're studying, undergraduate students read 300 word passages. Two groups of students: one group read it and reread it again before the test and the second group studied it and took a practice test. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE THE BRAIN regulates: -​ Sleep/wakefulness -​ Breathing/eating/body function -​ Sensation/cognition/movement/behavior NEURONS: the communication network Information coming into the neuron is going to be chemical but within the neuron is electrical and once it gets to the axon's terminals it turns into chemical again for the next neuron. ​ Dendrites: pick up chemical info from other cells ​ Axon: electrical info is passed from the cell body to the end (axon’s terminals) ​ Synapse: exchange of chemical information that neurons connect with each other. ​ Action potential: the electrical signal sent down the axon. ○​ Neuron at rest is polarized, there is a different concentration of negative ions inside the cell. ​ Negative pole: inside ​ Positive pole: outside ○​ During an action potential neurons become depolarized, positive particles rapidly flow into the axon, they no longer have negativity in the inside and positive outside, but it becomes more positive, it only happens for a short period of time. ​ Myelin sheath: determines action potential speed, insulates the axon and keep connection strong and fast. ○​ Node of Ranvier: the ion exchange only need to happen here, the information just jumps from Node to Node (spaces between myelin sheath) SYNAPSES  ​ Presynaptic: sending information, before the exchange happens. ​ Postsynaptic: after exchange happens, receiving information. ​ Synapses: exchange points that connect neurons. ○​ Nerve impulse: action potential, signals release into synaptic gaps called vesicles filled with neurotransmitters. Vesicles fuse to the lipid membrane wall and it opens up and releases neurotransmitters in synaptic gaps and binds to receptors of postsynaptic neurons. NEURAL FIRING RATE Shape of electricity and how it changes over time, dotted line is 0 point, above is positive, under is negative. The spike is action potential, the flat line is the neuron at rest, pumps reverse the process and negativity is inside the axon. -​ We need to know how many happen and in what period of time, each green line is a spike (action potential spike). -​ Neurons fire action potentials even when they are not stimulated, there is a bit of noise, we can look at spontaneous and stimulated action potentials. -​ It can be slow spontaneous firing rate or fast spontaneous firing rate, you can characterize them through this. In the auditory system we have separate neurons for louder and lower sounds, they only activate for each sound. -​ Lower sounds are More sensitive neurons are faster -​ Loud sounds are slow spontaneous, and are less sensitive. REPRESENTING THE ENVIRONMENT: TOUCH Four primary sensory cells: Meissner’s corpuscle, discs stack on top of each other, when something touches your skin discs get displayed, it is generating action potentials. -​ When there is no force there's no spikes, slight force we see some action potentials being generated. -​ We can represent the force on the skin by the firing rate. How does brain activity represent thought, emotion, sensation? HUBEL AND WEISEL: Study done in cats to determine the visual cortex (back of the head) they out recording needles and stimulate their eyeballs and how neurons or spiking of it represents different features of visual stimulation, some neurons are sensitive to lines or corners, that’s how we distinguish different shapes and objects. INTERIM SUMMARY ➔​ Neurons are fundamental units of the nervous system and generate action potentials for information transmission. ➔​ Neurons communicate with each other with chemical neurotransmission at the synapse; some transmitters excite while others inhibit. ➔​ Dynamics of action potentials (e.g, firing rates) contribute to the representation of information. NERVOUS SYSTEM ORGANIZATION ​ THE NERVOUS SYSTEM ​ Central nervous system: how we remember stuff and how we organize it in our brain. Peripheral: nerves, outside -​ Somatic:nerves and neurons coordinate movement and where body is in space -​ Autonomic: nerves going inside the body -​ Sympathetic: fight or flight -​ Parasympathetic: opposite, chill mode of body, digest, lower respiration, lower heart rate. Enteric nervous system: neurons around esophagus to the anus is a separate nervous system and it is essentially wrap around that part body it controls motor function through gut brain access, flora and bacteria, site and smell can cause enteric system to be active and have acid or stomach problems, gastrointestinal secretion. THE BRAIN 1.​ Outer layer of the brain: cerebral cortex. a.​ Grooves: sulci (singular: sulcus) b.​ Ridges: Gyri (singular: gyrus) 2.​ Left hemisphere 3.​ Right hemisphere 4.​ Longitudinal fissure  5.​ Corpus callosum a.​ Subcortical areas; limbic system: thalamus, hypothalamus and pituitary gland. b.​ Memory, long term memories: hippocampus (sea horse) LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION Perception/cognition examples 1.​ Frontal lobe: executive and cognitive control; judgment and decision making, creativity 2.​ Temporal lobe: sound (time mechanism, frequencies, neurons good with time are here); emotion; memory 3.​ Parietal lobe: touch, pain; attention; cognitive effort 4.​ Occipital lobe: vision More complex cognitions 1.​ Faces: Fusiform Face Area (FFA) ventral area of the temporal lobe 2.​ DISTRIBUTED PROCESSING a.​ Observing a face is more than the FFA, the overall experience (including cognition) of a face involves a distributed network of brain activity. b.​ Evaluation of attractiveness, awareness of gaze direction, initial visual processing, emotional reactions (underneath FFA), face perception (FFA). INTERIM SUMMARY -​ 4 major lobes of the brain are parietal, frontal, temporal, and occipital. -​ Anterior/posterior: front to back -​ Superior-dorsal/anterior-ventral: top to bottom -​ Lateral/medial: outside to inside -​ Brain functions are both distributed and localized. NEURAL FUNCTION AND NEURAL IMAGING How do we know where faces are processed in the brain? With a house we use anterior portions of temporal lobe, that is where object perception happens ​ Example: Prosopagnosia: can see faces but have a hard time recognising their identities. ○​ Inability to recognize faces (including own face) ○​ Reliance on hair color, voice or clothes for recognition. ○​ 2.5% of people ○​ Causes: trauma to fusiform gyrus (FG), congenital abnormalities to FG Single dissociation: how behavior is linked to brain activity. It is not good enough because familiarity is not being taken into account, single dissociation is not good enough because of the rivalry hypothesis. FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING (fMRI) Oxygen is a key term and how much is in the blood, we can infer neuron activity because they need to have oxygen delivered, vascular arterial system that deliver oxygen and other nutrients. Oxygen is important for cellular activity because to create ATP in the mitochondria to create glucose (required to create ATP), you need ATP for cellular to work. SUBTRACTION TECHNIQUE ​ ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY (EEG) Fluctuations of electrical activity (voltages) measured from sensors placed on the scalp -​ Event-related potentials (ERPs): event averaging is a way to isolate brain activity that is time-locked to an event.  -​ ODDBALL TECHNIQUE: NOVELTY DETECTION MORE NEUROIMAGING METHODS ​ Positron Emission Tomography (PET): blood flow (like fMRI), ingest tracer and be in blood and will bring radioactive elements that will show in a picture. ​ Magnetoencephalography (MEG): Cortical magnetic fields, expensive and cold columns with helium, specific applications. ​ Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS): blood flow measured with light. Light through the scalp and depending on how much oxygen there is in your blood the light will reflect differently. NEUROSCIENCE IN THE MEDIA ​ Neuroscience’s influential effects (McCabe and Castel) ​ Neuromarketing: efficacy?, conflict of interest ​ Neuroethics: neural fingerprint, da Silva Castanheira et al. 2021 SENSATION: nervous system detects or encodes information from the environment -​ Light = sensory neurons = brain response PERCEPTION: how we interpret nerve sensations or give meaning to them. -​ What is it? -​ How bright? -​ What colour? -​ Where is it? THREE THEMES OF PERCEPTION 1.​ Perception is about prediction a.​ Predictive coding theory: the brain is constantly updating a “mental model” of the world (model is based on patterns/regularities). Assume that the goal of the brain is to predict sensory state, be sensitive to information that is not in accordance with the internal model but we need to learn it. b.​ Mental model compared to incoming sensory information, if we get red circles is all i have but as soon as green comes in we are comparing it and that is unpredicted so we update the internal model. c.​ Things that we expect are not deeply processed. d.​ Perception heightened for unexpected events - uncertainties e.​ Reduce uncertainty toward behavioral goals, continually using uncertainty. f.​ Brain can make up stuff when sensory input is lacking! g.​ More unexpectedly it is the higher level it goes. h.​ The power of prior information (internal model) for perception. i.​ PROBLEMS WITH PREDICTIVE CODING THEORY i.​ Error signals are sometimes absent when they should be there.  2.​ Perception is about objects in context a.​ Stuff going on around us affects how we experience something. b.​ We rarely perceive things in isolation. c.​ The dress 2015 social media battle (Blue/black or white/gold) 3.​ Everyday perception is multimodal: the brain integrates sensation of different senses. a.​ McGurk Effect: when sight and sound clash, the illusion of what you are hearing and looking at, a face or mouth movement can influence what we are hearing. b.​ We experience events through multiple senses. i.​ Visual cortex (V1/V2) influences speech processing in auditory cortex (A1) through multisensory areas (posterior superior temporal sulcus, pSTS) that detects errors. c.​ Distinct brain structures for multisensory integration. d.​ Speech involves speech, vision, even the motor system. e.​ Flavour involves taste, smell, touch ATTENTION -​ As information processing and selection -​ Neural correlates of attention -​ Attention as selection BROADBENT'S MODEL Two stimulus coming into nervous system and we know which one we want to pay attention to (attended) and there is a filter process, it filters out unwanted info and the attended one passes to the higher level processing (not every information from our surroundings passes to higher level) -​ Inattentional deafness: inability to perceive information you are not actively listening to. ATTENTION AS INFO PROCESSING: COCKTAIL PARTY EFFECT (E.Colin) Cocktail party listening tasks, even when you're paying attention to something other stuff can catch your attention. -​ Azimuth: horizontal plane (left vs right), 0 degrees in front of you and talk about location of things as a circle around you, the back is 180 degrees. -​ Elevation: vertical -​ Pay attention either left or right -​ Respond to targets in left or right TRIESMAN’S ATTENUATION MODEL Unattended information can still get into the nervous system so the attenuator reduces but doesn’t eliminate the unattended message, it still passess in a weaker way. -​ Unattended can pass but not as strong as the attended message, the nervous system catches unexpected information too. ATTENTION AS SELECTION Cocktail party “problem” (not the same as “effect”; occurs before) -​ How does the brain “unmix” multiple speech sources into separate streams? We don’t know.  -​ Physical energy that reaches the ears is a “mixture” of all sounds in the environment. -​ Overt attention -​ Overt (paying attention and looking at the same time that the person is talking), Voluntary Covert (looking at one thing and paying attention to someone else, done as voluntary when you're talking to them but you are looking at things around her), Involuntary Covert (the gaze doesn’t shift but attention will move to the cup falling involuntarily because it will update internal model but the task is to talk to the professor so gaze won’t move) -​ Fixations vs Saccadic Eye Movement: fixation is large movement of where you’re looking, saccade is when you move to a different location the moment when your eyes slide to another location (shifts in attention) -​ First fixation: the first location we looked at. -​ “Bottom up” overt attention captured by stimulus salience. (Look at small green trees instead of big orange rocks). Salient thighs that are meaningful will catch attention and eyes will go there. -​ “Why is dentistry important? Because even though he’s missing an eyebrow, the first thing you notice is his smile (without a teeth)” -​ Attention directed “top-down” by cognitive factors like knowledge and expectations (internal models). Printer on stove, it stands out because it is not where our expectations or knowledge would understand. -​ Attention directed by goals: peanut butter sandwich preparation (grab can, open it, grab knife with peanut butter and bread at the same time). -​ Covert attention: opposite of what we’re looking at -​ Attention as selection: Michael Posner 1978: Pre Cueing paradigm, look at the cross and pay attention to where they tell you without moving eyes, valid trials is when square appears where you should be paying attention. -​ Strayer and Johnstone 2001: Divided attention -​ Cognitive Load: load theory of attention (Lavie, 1995) -​ Cognitive resources are finite -​ Relevant stimuli are processed before irrelevant stimuli. -​ Higher cognitive load: slower, less accurate responses, slower to respond to tasks CASE STUDY: NEURAL EVIDENCE FOR ATTENTIONAL SELECTION -​ Attend to the left or right speaker. -​ Continuous speech (two different audiobooks) -​ Correlate brain response and real speech. -​ DING AND SIMON 2012: COCKTAIL PARTY LISTENING -​ Correlation between brain and speech: -​ Bigger for attended speech -​ Smaller for ignored or background speech. CLIVE WEARING: 1958 herpes that attacked nervous system, encephalitis and infection and degraded hippocampus in charge of forming new memories and accessing old memories, so now he can’t do that. He only has short term memory. MEMORY: not about the past but about the future. Retention of information over time. -​ Reflects different abilities (memory is not one thing, many systems) -​ Memory is actively reconstructed, reconstruction of memories and they update with the present and future (not passively reproduced) -​ Three general systems 1.​ Sensory memory 2.​ Short term memory 3.​ Long term memory ATKINSON AND SHIFFRIN (1968): MODAL MODEL OF MEMORY ​ Two important dimensions: how much information and for how long. ​ We retrieve info from long term memory and we are aware of it and it stores in short term memory as a workplace. -​ Divisions between modes are not discrete, not easy to say when one begins or ends. -​ Modes work continuously together -​ CONTROL PROCESSES: rehearsal, attention to memory, forming associations. SENSORY MEMORY: ​ PURPOSE: holds sensory information ​ DURATION: lasts for ½ sec of visual and 2-4 sec for auditory. ​ CAPACITY: large, transient but high capacity. ○​ Information that doesn't transfer gets lost. ​ George Sperling (1960): studied sensory memory capacity ○​ “Whole-reported method” report all 12 ​ 50 millisecond presentation ​ How many letters can you recall? ​ 4.5 out of 12 (37%) ○​ “Partial report method”: report 4 according to the tone. ​ Tones as post-cue ​ Attention to memory ​ 3.3/4 (82%) ○​ Decay of sensory memory when there is a delay. ​ Delay of tone post-cue: manipulate it and increase time between letters and tone, to measure sensory memory. ​ “Iconic memory”: sensory memory stuff that you can look at, vision ​ Lasts about ½ second ​ Darwin et al. (1972): Echoic memory, auditory memory ○​ “Beep” post-cued the spatial location (right ear, left or center) ○​ “Echoic” memory lasts 2-4 seconds ○​ Whole report: performance low when you have to report 9 digits. SHORT TERM MEMORY Current content of your mind ​ PURPOSE: holds information temporarily for analysis. ​ DURATION: up to 30 sec without rehearsal ○​ Rehearsal (control process): repeating a stimulus in your mind (phone number, google authenticator) ○​ John Brown (1958): Remember three letters, recall after a period of time. ​ Prevent rehearsal (occupying the brain with another task). ​ Count backwards from a number in intervals of 3. ​ Decay after 15-20 sec duration, lose info during decay. ​ CAPACITY: limited to 5-9 items. ○​ Information not transferred is lost ​ Keppel and Underwood, duration (1958): First trial after 18 seconds performance is really good, many trials performance and remembering things decline. ○​ Interference: old info similar to new information and interferes. ○​ Thought question: Do tasks with many trials better represent short-term memory in daily life? ​ George Miller, capacity (1956): “The Magic Number”, remember numbers ○​ “Digit span” task. On average 5-9 digits, (7 plus or minus 2) ○​ Common short-term memory test ○​ Number specific? Recent research (4 items, Cowan 2001). ○​ CHUNKING ​ Associating elements that are similar or meaningful in order to retain more information. ​ Ericsson et al (1980): Participant “S.F”, 230 hours of chunking training. ​ Repeated up to 79 digits. WORKING MEMORY (Baddeley and Hitch (1974+) System for temporary storage and manipulation of information. 1.​ Central executive: control of attention, oversees all these processes. Decide your cognitive resources division or focus. a.​ Phonological Loop: verbal info type of information that exists here and involves sound. i.​ Phonological similarity effect (Conrad 1964): Confusion of words or letters that sound familiar. ii.​ Word length effect (Baddeley et al, 1984): shorter words easier to remember. iii.​ Articulatory suppression (Baddeley et al, 1984): articulators part of the face to make sounds, if you occupy them then how that affects your memory. b.​ Episodic Buffer: idea of rehearsing and chunking, uses control processes to boost short term memory or working memory. c.​ Visuospatial sketchpad: visual information, real images, layouts, what things look like in space or how spaces look like (relaying on long term memory).  i.​ Few people fought against this system, nobody argued the fact that we can hold images in our brain. ii.​ If you want to rearrange the room then you manipulate mentally the space, mental rotation (Shepard and Metzler, 1971): manipulate how much you need to rotate figures to say if they are the same or different.